Fast Forward With Pandora VP of Product, Chris Becherer
I was in Austin, Texas, last week for SXSW Interactive, where I had the chance to sit down with a number of tech industry execs for my video series Fast Forward. First up is Chris Becherer, VP of Product at streaming music service Pandora. We talked about new product development, the future of streaming music, and some of the challenges Pandora faces in the industry. Check out our chat in the video and transcript below.
Dan Costa: Let's start off with the news that you announced today which is that Pandora has a new premium product.
Very big day for Pandora, very exciting. Yeah, just today we announced that Pandora Premium, which is our new $9.99 subscription tier that combines the best of personalized internet radio, which Pandora has set the standard for for many years as you know, with a full on-demand feature set. I used to run Product at Rdio, and I came over in the acquisition in late 2015, and since then we've been hard at work on redefining what a $10 music service should be. We've done that, and so, super excited to be rolling it out...to our entire user base over the next several weeks. Then you'll see a pretty big marketing campaign and a lot of cool exciting things throughout the spring, as we iterate on the product and make it even better.
Explain what on-demand features really include. People are used to subscribing to Pandora. It's basically an internet radio station. They don't have total control over what they're gong to hear next, but it tunes to their interests. Then you can pay $5 and get no advertisements. You're going a step beyond that.
That's correct. Pandora has been around for over 10 years. Traditionally known as a radio service, a personalized radio service. It has really set the standard for what a personalized radio service should be; that thumb up, thumb down, everybody's very familiar with that UI. Pandora pioneered that. Throughout those 10 years, we've built up a huge audience. We have 80 million monthly users here in the US. We have a hundred million quarterly users and we actually have 160 million people now in the US that have thumbed up at least one song. That's exactly half of America, latest census, 320 million, so exactly half of the country. We have some understanding of your taste.
That can change over the course of a night, over the course of a week.
It's also got a social component where people can share playlists.
Sharing stations is not quite as unique.
Yeah. Have you tried that in Pandora Plus?
Not a lot of successful services.
It just seems like there's a lot of opportunities there.
Yes, and we're really thinking about that very deeply right now. We bought Ticketfly, which is a huge ticketing service. They have a ton of awesome venues across America. We are testing a bunch of different things. One thing that we now have in the app, which I could show you, is if you go to the artist page in Premium of your favorite band, and they're on tour, we'll give you a little notification that they're on tour and we will let you actually route through and purchase the ticket in a web view without leaving Pandora.
That's kind of a start. We actually did something similar at Rdio but we have much bigger plans of how we can really kind of integrate that Ticketfly data that we have in all the Ticketfly service into the Pandora experience. I totally agree with you. We will start sending you notifications. We're already doing that a little bit today, but we've got more plans for that. When the band announces a tour, if it's somebody that we think you like, we'll send you a notification. Like you said, that's a real value add ad. It's kind of like an advertisement but it's helpful information too.
The trick is different artists will play in different venues that are run by different promotions companies, so it's not like everything goes through the same pipeline. It's a little hard sometimes.
Every dealer has to be cut separately.
Everything's a little different. We're definitely working on it. We want that. I mean, I want to do more things too where we're bringing back some live experience back into the product. Let's say you go see Lucero show and you love it. We'd love to have a set list waiting for you in Pandora Premium the next day. We're thinking about a lot of cool ideas like that. Again, the Ticketfly integration really helps. We started with some simple notifications but you're going to see that get a lot more interesting.
The other thing we have that we love, nobody else is doing this, is something we call artist audio messages. What artists can do, and we have actually a tent across the street where we're having artists come in and record these, artists can, using the Pandora app, the same Pandora app that we have, they have some different buttons that they're verified artists, they can record a message into their phone and it could be anything they want, but usually when they're doing it is when they're on tour. They can geo target that message to play on their station only for users that are listening in those areas. If they have a tour coming up, they're like, "Hey, Portland, we're coming to you next week. Come check us out." The listener is hearing that artist's radio station and then the artist is peppering in, from their own voice, a message for, an ad essentially, for their show and we don't charge them to do that. That's just something-
You're just bypassing local radio stations. All of those processes just get taken out and they can talk directly to their fans through Pandora.
Exactly right. What could be more direct? It's literally phone to phone. We get some really, really cool artist messages that are about the songs that the artist wrote, or about how the band was formed, things like that, but we're seeing more and more for shows and the artist can actually embed a link so, while the user is hearing the audio message, the user will see a link that would drive to purchase the ticket. If it's a Ticketfly venue it can all happen right there without leaving the now playing view. It's coming together but it's just a complicated ecosystem to get all the different pieces in place.
Interesting. You're the product guy. I think one of the most interesting things to happen to streaming music is that it's been enabled by these voice driven interfaces in the home, Alexa, Google Home. Pandora's on all these platforms, usually at launch, which I gotta think is a huge advantage because you're building that user behavior and those habits, and that's really a space that, I mean you could always use a Bluetooth speaker and send your signal to your speaker, but it's a lot easier when you just ask it to play Billie Holiday, and it starts playing Pandora's Billie Holiday station.
Exactly. Super exciting. The success of the Echo has really just been very interesting to watch. Obviously that's more than a device, that's a platform, and you see all the different Alexa integrations that people are picking up now. We're very, very interested because radio, there's so many situations where something like that pairs really well with radio, when you're driving. Driving has always been a really tough challenge for the streaming designers. All of us in the design community that have been growing up with streaming music, cars always been really tough because, of course people want to listen to music in their car, but no one wants to be twiddling around with little buttons and there's regulatory issues, and do you do a totally different UI? What's the right thing to do there?
One thing that really, really helps is voice in a car. LivingRoom, I think is really similar, is you're in the living room, you don't always have your phone on you. You're playing music collaboratively with your family. That's just another place-
That collaborative nature is also something that didn't really exist before.
Right.
It was terminal based. One terminal, one request and now people argue, the genres switch from song to song.
Who owns the Alexa? Who's Alexa listening to? Yeah. Exactly. I think that music is such a great category for those types of devices. You're going to see a ton of innovation there. You're exactly right. We're getting a ton of listening on those platforms. CE in fact, Consumer Electronics is our fastest growing category of platforms. It's really, really taken off in the last couple years. I think what will be interesting, cause the knock on Echo and Google Home and some of these devices, is the audio quality isn't all that great. For a lot of users that doesn't matter. We were talking about before, high end bit rates, that's a niche thing, but I do think that there's still a pretty big difference in audio quality from something like an Echo to something like a Sonos.
What I think will be really cool is when we start seeing voice and quality come together a bit more, where you can have a system that's really effortless, really easy to use, pulling your Pandora all of your stations, all your personalization, and it sounds great. I think we're going to see that very soon. That's very exciting, but huge category for us and one you'll see us continue to invest in.
All right. I want to be respectful of your time. I've got a couple more questions. These are my standard questions I ask all my guests. In terms of looking into the future, what are you most concerned about in the music industry and in the streaming industry? What are the things that keep you up at night? I gotta think it's about licensing.
Actually, yeah, that is one of them. One of them is certainly it's a very competitive market. It's a competitive market that we're facing some big boys. I worked at Apple for a long time. I know how powerful some of those players are. I really believe that Pandora has a different approach. The fact that we've been able to build up a hundred million quarterly actives that are listening and engaging with the app more than any other service, there's something special there. I really do think the same thing that made it special in radio is going to make it special in on demand and I inherently believe that on demand is a really wide mass market opportunity. Not everyone thinks that. It's like, "Oh, how many people really going to pay for it?" But when you really understand the value of all the world's music at your fingertips, organized in ways that are useful, that works on many devices, that are really ubiquitous; I mean $10.00 is a very fair price for that. I feel very bullish about Pandora's chances there, but competition is tough.
On the licensing side, you're right. There is some fears there a little bit, just because we have a lot of power in the hands of a handful of labels. They're awesome partners. We really enjoyed working with them, but it is a different type of product to build when you have a stakeholder like that. There's three or four different companies that we really need to be in cahoots with, where if you're building a photo sharing app you don't really have that extra stakeholder. So they are a partner, but also a stakeholder and it's one that we have to ... It's a new muscle for Pandora to learn how to work together with an industry like that. We'll see how that goes. So far it's been off to a great start, but that's something that we're all going to have to continue to grow into.
If you had one service product or gadget that you use every day that's totally changed your life, what would it be, not including Pandora or Rdio?
I wish I had a more creative answer but ride sharing services and apartment sharing services, I think have really expanded what the on demand economy can mean. I live in San Francisco. Pandora's over in Oakland. More times than I should, I'm taking a lift over, an Uber over there and I just think it's been fascinating to watch that transformation. We don't have those services here in Austin, and you really feel that cut off feeling of not being able to get around.
What we do have here is Airbnb and there's a group of us staying in this awesome Airbnb down the street that we'd never have found before those types of services. I'm interested in watching that whole category, whether it's transportation, or accommodations, or parking, or apartment rentals. I think there's a lot of interesting things that will happen in that on demand, crowd sourced, shared economy.
Very cool. If listeners want to get in touch with you, follow what you're doing, following what Pandora's doing, how can they find you online?
You can find me on Twitter, find me on all the socials. It's always my last name. I've got an unusual last name so I kind of own the space there. It's just @Becherer on Twitter, Becherer on Facebook. I have Becherer pretty much everywhere.
Chris, Thanks so much for taking the time. I appreciate it.
I really enjoyed it. Thank you.
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This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.